MJ Keller, 2025 Space Telescope Science Institute Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: University of Rochester
Hello! My name is MJ Keller, and I’m a recent graduate from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. I completed a BS in Physics & Astronomy in May, and am excited to return to the SPS Internship Program for a second year as the STScI Research Intern!I’m deeply passionate about astronomical research and physics education, and when I’m not working on my own research I spend my time tutoring high school students in physics. I have worked with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration for a year and a half studying galaxy groups and clusters in an effort to calibrate the Tully-Fisher relation, one of the steps on the cosmological distance ladder.Outside of astrophysics, I love trying new restaurants, live music of all kinds, musical theater, and origami. I’m looking forward to sharing everything I love about Washington, D.C., food, and astronomy with my fellow interns!

Internship

Host: Space Telescope Science Institute Research Intern

Internship Blog

Week 1: Maestro? Da Capo, Per Piacere.

D.C., it’s great to be back! I wasn’t expecting the city to feel so familiar after two years, but here I am, back in a GW dorm (hooray, air conditioning!), chowing down on the Sweetgreen crispy rice bowl, and commuting on the blue/orange/silver line. Some things never change, huh? On the other hand, though, a lot has changed. I was just out of sophomore year when I was here interning at the Niels Bohr Library and Archives. Now I’m freshly graduated with a year and a half of research under my belt, and as I get started down the road of my internship with the Space Telescope Science Institute I can’t help but think about how much better prepared I am now than I would have been when I was here last. I’ve grown so much, but this summer isn’t about looking back and retracing my footsteps from two summers ago; it’s about looking forward, trying new things and having new experiences. So, the first new thing: the new American Center for Physics building (below)! Woah! It’s both a beautiful space in terms of functionality, well-suited to what it’s used for, and also beautiful in that it feels like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. In a lot of ways, how we design things in the modern day seem to echo how we thought we were going to design them when we were dreaming about the future, and the building ACP is housed in now fits that gleaming, futuristic paradigm. (The coffee machine also feels straight out of Star Trek—what do you mean there’s a machine that will make me a latte with the press of a single button?)

(The atrium of the building where ACP is hosted. I think the hanging artwork looks like how neutrinos appear on IceCube’s detectors.)

ACP is an inspiring place to work not just because of the building, but because of the community of physicists and physics-adjacent folks working there. I’ve gotten to reconnect with some old colleagues, as well as meeting new (or new-to-me) folks working in the space, all of them happy to see a new cohort of interns coming in.
As a cosmology researcher with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument collaboration in undergrad, I’ve fortunately gotten a pretty good handle on astronomy research jargon. I met with my mentor, Dr. Nimisha Kumari, and she looped me in that she’d like me to work within the epoch of reionization this summer, or a redshift of around 6 to 9. (Quick jargon lesson: “reionization” is the period of the universe’s history in which the soup of neutral hydrogen that filled the space between everything converted from neutral hydrogen into ions, spreading out in tendrils from ionized patches surrounding galaxies. “Redshift” is a measure of cosmic times and distances relative to Earth, where the more redshifted something is, the further away from us it is, and thus the farther back in time we see it.) This is super exciting to me, as I’ve worked with redshifts less than 1 for the last few years, so getting to explore even further from Earth is a great draw for me.I’ll be working with data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array this summer, and I’m currently deciding between two complementary surveys that focus specifically on extragalactic spectroscopy that will allow me to narrow down to a single research project idea. Work-wise this week... well, I downloaded a lot of PDFs. Then I read those PDFs, and Googled the words used in them. After reading enough research articles to start dreaming in AASTeX formatting, I compiled a summary of the current literature from both of the surveys to present to my mentor on my first day in-person at STScI on Tuesday. Wish me luck!

We were also invited to attend a Trimble lecture by Peter Galison, a researcher with the Event Horizon Telescope team who imaged M87* back in 2019. (Not to brag, but in undergrad a friend and I imaged M87, and you can see the black hole jet in our shot.) His lecture, “History, Philosophy, and Culture of Black Holes in the Midst,” gave me a lot to think about in terms of collaboration between international scientists. With DESI, all the world is focused on data coming from one ground-based telescope, whereas the EHT required immense amounts of coordination worldwide. Working together on a scale like that is something I didn’t know I valued so highly in my field, but having heard him put his work so concisely, I’ve realized that it’s absolutely crucial to my faith in and enjoyment of the work I do.

(M87 and Virgo A*, the supermassive black hole at the center shooting out the visible jet.)As far as fun goes, this was a pretty modest week, with everyone getting settled in for work. Some highlights: two batches of focaccia (and a third on the way), Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and karaoke at TONIC, which was one of my favorite local places two summers ago and remains to be one! Upcoming, hopefully, is trips to DC’s many wonderful coffeeshops, jazz at Jojo’s Bar, and finally getting to bake some sourdough for the rest of the interns.

(Interns at TONIC karaoke. As the only Floridian present, I had to represent with Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville.)

Here’s to another phenomenal summer with SPS!

Week 2: Planes, Trains, Automobiles, Busses, The Metro...

I’ll start off by saying that robust public transit is an absolute wonder. (Fairly) consistent timing, (relatively) cheap prices, and I don’t have to think about driving? Wins all around. So Tuesday morning at 6:15, I put my headphones on, filled up my water bottle, and departed for the infamous STScI intern commute.

Step 1: orange line to New Carrollton, the last stop on the line. We spend a lot of time on the orange line, since it runs through Foggy Bottom station, but we never take it all the way out. One by one, the metro passed stations I’ve gotten off at before, until the announcement came over the crackly PA system that the next stop was the last.

Step 2: navigate New Carrollton station. Every great movie has a scene of someone running up or down the stairs, right? The scene that came to mind for me as I ran down from the metro platform into the main station is the iconic one from The Fugitive (1993), where Tommy Lee Jones as Deputy Sam Gerard is running up the stairwell on one side while Dr. Richard Kimble runs down on the other. Fortunately, I wasn’t being chased, but I popped out on the platform breathless and praying I was waiting for the right train.

Step 3: talk to the other folks on the platform to try to make sure we were waiting for the right train. One thing I love about DC is how absolutely everyone is doing something completely different, and very interesting. The group I popped out closest to were on a “field trip” to a conference up in New York City, taking the train we were about to board together much farther than I was. The train pulled up, and we all boarded.

Step 4: stare out the window for the entire trip from New Carrollton to Baltimore. Lots of trees. 10/10.

Step 5: get off the train and stare at the ceiling of Penn Station for a few minutes while trying to figure out which bus to catch to get to Johns Hopkins University’s campus.

(The ceiling of Baltimore Penn Station.)

Step 6: watch a couple busses come and go before finally committing to one that seems right.

Step 7: breathe a giant sigh of relief when the bus actually goes in the direction I want it to, and count down stops until I can get off.
Step 8: walk across Johns Hopkins’s campus to get to the Space Telescope Science Institute building. Spend altogether too long looking at this statue of a really round cat.

(Really round cat statue on the JHU campus. There were other animals, but this one captured my heart.)

Step 9: find STScI, talk to the folks at the front desk, and hang out in the café until my mentor arrives, because I planned enough wiggle room into my schedule to still get there at 8:30.

Three different kinds of public transit, PLUS my own two legs? What an adventure! And that was all before I even got to start working for the day.

I’ll keep what I say about STScI brief here, if only because I know I’ll have even more to say in future blogs: what a neat place! Everyone was incredibly welcoming, and clearly deeply passionate about their work, which made the first-day jitters dissolve easily. My office-mate works with the STScI library, which definitely helped to ease my nerves, as I got to ask her all about her work. I can’t wait to keep coming back as I develop my project idea!

At 5PM, I left for the day, and then I did steps 1 through 8 in reverse order until I collapsed back at Shenkman Hall on my bed, still fully dressed. And that was my first day in the office!

The rest of the week was filled with fun as I worked through recent literature from ALMA high-redshift surveys analyzing plots.

Wednesday we went to the Wharf, played cornhole, and got ice cream. Thursday was the dinner cruise, which was an absolutely incredible experience from getting to talk to so many folks in the AIP community to wearing myself out line-dancing with Naomi. Friday, Naomi, Rosie, Saniya, Rosie’s sister, and I binge-watched Ted Lasso and finished season 1—if you’ve never watched it, take this as an endorsement to start it ASAP. Saturday, Jack Hehn took Naomi, Sunny, and I to see the National Orchestral Institute + Festival perform Mendelssohn’s Sommernachtstraum, which is possibly my favorite suite of all time. (As I write this, I’m actually listening to a recording of it—if you think you’ve never heard it, check out movement 12, and I bet it’ll be familiar.) Sunday, to cap off a week of fun, Naomi, Kalen, and I went to the International Spy Museum and spent four hours looking at gadgets, gizmos, and historical spies. Then, I treated myself to dinner at Founding Farmers, and here we are, jumping into week 3!

(Live music at The Wharf.)

(NOI+F just before intermission, having played Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice and a musing on Mendelssohn entitled (K)ein Sommernachtstraum—Not a Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

(Goat cheese ravioli with butternut squash pureé from Founding Farmers.)

Week 3: Antici...pation.

Week three in the books, and I feel like I’ve only just begun my internship still! This week felt like I was perpetually gearing up for something to happen, but I’m still not sure what, exactly, I was waiting for. My working theory is that I’m just excited to finish preliminary research and get to jump in on my project at STScI—that is definitely something worth feeling all revved up for. At present, I’m still working on making sense of all of the previous literature, trying to find common threads between different projects and keeping an eye out for what they might not have covered yet, or what data has been underutilized.

Tuesday I was at STScI in person again, and met a new officemate! Nina is a media studies PhD, studying how JWST images and data are presented to the public. We talked for a couple of hours about astronomical/astrophysical instruments and how different data is presented, as well as my personal experiences with different telescopes. Work this week has been slow going, but I’m getting a good handle on the data sets I’ll be working with—what they’ve been used for, what their limitations are, and what, most importantly, isn’t reasonable to do with them.

Outside of work this week, we kept busy! And I spent a lot of time cooking with cheese. As the interns at the ACP offices, we became the de facto garbage disposal for any leftover food, which included an absolutely massive cheese tray. We’d been nibbling our way through it as best as we can, but on Wednesday I prepared the base for a baked macaroni and cheese using Gouda, Swiss, and pepper jack from the cheese tray, as well as baking yet another rosemary Parmesan focaccia to bring to the office. Then, on Thursday, Naomi, Rosie, and I shared the mac and cheese for dinner, though our lovely meal was interrupted by a fire alarm, so we brought our bowls of pasta outside with us. And boy, were the other folks out there jealous of that idea! (It was also pretty good mac and cheese, if I do say so myself—the three-cheese combo went together shockingly well, considering I didn’t follow any sort of recipe!)

(Our cute dinner, and us outside during the fire alarm.)

The weekend was significantly less cheesy, and was definitely something I’d been looking forward to... pretty much since getting accepted to this internship position. The Les Misérables US Tour is in DC, and it’s here not just one or two weeks, but for an entire month! I attended Friday night to avoid the opening-night gala crowds, and, well, let’s just say I’ll be spending a lot of time at the Kennedy Center for the next month. Seriously, if you’re in the area, it’s more than worth grabbing tickets to catch this exceptional cast.

(Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center. Check out the open pit!)

After crying so hard at the finale I walked out dehydrated, I had less than 24 hours to recover before my second trip to the National Orchestral Institute + Festival, courtesy of the wonderful Jack Hehn with AAPT, to cry just as hard at Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony. As the only one in the group in attendance who had heard the piece before, it was a treat getting to watch them (especially Rosie) react to the innovations Mahler wrote into the piece, from the col legno in the cello to the off-stage horns in the marathon finale movement. But no less exciting that night was getting to hear the NOI+F co-commission piece, Kinsfolknem by Jasmine Barnes, a concerto for flute, oboe (Titus Underwood!), clarinet, and bassoon, which was an emotional landscape of a piece that kept the room captivated from the first note to the last. It made such an impact that a room full of orchestra nerds—including myself!—forgot our decorum and applauded like madmen after the first movement.

(NOI+F and the Baltimore Choral Arts Society receiving applause after Mahler 2.)

I took all day Sunday to do laundry, tidy up, and cook, including trying fiddlehead ferns for the first time! They’re on sale at Whole Foods in Foggy Bottom right now, and I’d describe the texture as asparagus-y and the taste like a cross between asparagus and kale.

Up next in week four: finishing up my preliminary research (hopefully!), more Les Mis, and, almost definitely, finishing more of the cheese platter in new and creative ways. I’m ready to hit the ground running this week, especially after feeling like all of last week was spent winding me up like a top to launch.

Week 4: The Nuclear Reactor Next Door

Is there such a thing as going to see Les Mis at the Kennedy Center too many times? If there is, I’m well on my way there. In addition to getting to experience different combinations of casts—I’ve seen three different Éponines!—the show is a phenomenal way for me to decompress and sort through my thoughts after work. So, for the time being, I’ll be exploiting the same-day rush ticket process as often as I can.

(Bows at Les Mis on Tuesday night.)

As I’d hoped, week 4 was when I (finally!) managed to crack through the end of my preliminary research, getting clearance from Dr. Kumari to start making some original plots on Tuesday. First, I need to make sure no one has already made them, but given the breadth of my preliminary literature review, I think I’m in the clear.

Wednesday and Thursday weren’t work days, which was both a ton of fun and a little disorienting. I propose a new term for having two days “off” in a row that aren’t Saturday and Sunday: the weekmiddle. Wednesday saw the interns touring the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where JJ and Grace work for the summer. It was great to get to see Brad again—when I was an intern for the first time, he was still SPS Director, so I saw a lot more of him. We heard from folks in the Office of Advanced Manufacturing, where JJ, Grace, and Brad are stationed, and got to ask questions in a career panel there before taking a tour of the facility.

We went to tour... next door to the nuclear reactor, in the neutron research facility. It felt like something straight out of a movie, and the excitement among the interns was palpable as we listened to explanations of the equipment, walking on catwalks between the different devices and listening to the clunk-thunk-hum of electricity through all of them. Among the behemoths of scientific study, I discovered my new favorite signage, which absolutely had to come from someone making a mistake.

(Sign on a sealing piece of equipment at the NIST neutron research facility. My heart goes out to whoever was inside before the sign was added.)

In addition to the neutron research facility, we went on a guided tour of the museum, spent a few minutes inside the anechoic chamber (equal parts disorienting and peaceful), and got positively drenched in the rain. All in all, 12/10 day.

Thursday was Juneteenth, which meant most of us had the day off. We made the most of it, first doing brunch at Tatte, then Naomi, Rosie, and I made our way to the Hirshhorn Museum for a day full of modern art. Usually, modern art isn’t my thing, but it was really enjoyable to see how the museum juxtaposed different pieces that were either explicitly related or seemed to be inspired by one another. The lowest floor contained an exhibit on Basquiat and Banksy, which kicked off the proclivity for juxtaposition that only continued through the higher floors. We spent 5 hours spiraling our way through the museum, with a break to sit in front of a massive painting and do some art of our own; Naomi and Rosie worked on mimicking pieces in the museum, and I made a small army of origami cranes, as is my tendency.

(Three of my favorite pieces from the Hirshhorn. The first was a full-room exhibit called ‘The Weather” by Laurie Anderson, the second entitled “Study for ‘The Swimming Hole’” by Thomas Eakins, and the third is “Conception Synchromy” by Stanton Macdonald-Wright.)

After another visit to the Kennedy Center on Thursday night, my weekmiddle was over, and I spent Friday working through the remaining questions I have from my preliminary research. Saturday was a much-needed day of rest, where I camped out in the kitchen baking and cooking.

Week 5: That Rocked.

Halfway through? Already? It doesn’t seem possible!

This week, I started working on actual research, cross-matching galaxies between two catalogs to use emission line data for some plots I’m trying to make. Unfortunately, despite using the Astronomical Data Center’s built-in cross-match function—which directly queries between the two tables you input—it seems that the galaxies that are listed in one of the catalogs are not actually the galaxies included in the papers for that catalog.

What’s both interesting and a little frustrating about astrophysics research is how little of a margin for error there is. When a target listing is off by a couple arcseconds, it may as well not exist. I spent the majority of the work week trying to decipher the mismatching, but ultimately came up empty. Fingers crossed for next week shedding some light on this!

Friday, we had a great workshop about science advocacy at ACP, and I learned that I’ve done a lot more advocacy than I had expected, especially on wildlife conservation fronts. My home state of Florida has incredible natural diversity, though it’s been threatened by a number of external forces over the years. My personal interests lie with sharks (check out the organization Shark Angels , working internationally to stop the needless death of sharks) and the Florida panther (check out Path of the Panther , expanding the panther’s range through land conservation).

Then, the most exciting part of the week: my best friend of many years came down to visit! We took off after work Friday to start making a dent in the vast collection of the Natural History Museum. We made it through the entirety of the ocean exhibit before the museum closed, and we were ushered out the front door. We stopped by Tatte on the way home for some good pastries, and put together a calculator to convert geological time into cosmological factors—the scale (a) and the redshift (z). If you’d like to try it yourself:

z = (14/(14-t))^(2/3)-1
a = 1/(1+z)

where t is in billions of years.

Of course, we couldn’t only do the ocean exhibit, so we came back Saturday to try to do the rest of the museum, and spent four hours in the rocks exhibit. (Which rocked, pun intended.) Somehow, despite dedicating a second day to the museum, we still didn’t hit every exhibit. I’m convinced that that’s the point of the Natural History Museum; there’s always more to see, no matter how many times you visit.

(Assorted rocks from the Natural History Museum rock exhibits.)

Sunday, we spent our afternoon at one of my favorite DC-area restaurants: Kura Revolving Sushi, where sushi plates trundle by your table on a conveyor belt. It’s a great experience—the restaurant has a singing robot that brings you your drinks—and a really fun way to try fish you’ve never eaten before. There are some that I’ve only seen prepared on Masterchef challenges, but now I can confidently say that raw sea bream is absolutely delicious.

Would you believe I made it through a whole calendar week without going to see Les Mis at the Kennedy Center? Well, I did! Then, after years of telling him it’s my favorite musical, I finally got to show it to my best friend. He, of course, loved it—how can you not? We got really lucky, catching Danny Martin (who usually plays Courfeyrac, one of the revolutionary students) as Enjolras, the leader of the revolution. He. Was. Show-stopping. Chatting with him at the stage door after the show, he said that it had been over five months since he last took on the role, and I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to try to hop back into something that’s no longer second-nature like that.

(Sunday night’s bows at the Kennedy Center!)

Either way, it was an incredible show, and now the itch to go back has returned. Wish me luck convincing some of the other interns to same-day rush with me next week! I’m hoping to head into STScI twice this upcoming week to get to know some of the other scientists who are working there, especially those who handle data similar to what I’m working with.

On to the second half!